SPACE FUNK (EXTENDED VERSION)

Jumping off the mp3blog co-optation paranoia, I got yet another email this morning about yet another new blog that doesn't just do the two-sentence setup, yousendit link punchline, funny rapper photo posts--it offers downloads for entire albums. The relative speed increase on web-based filesharing sites like Rapidshare and Zshare and a bunch others has helped this post one song--->post entire album transformation along, and the more lax these sites get with repeat downloads (i.e. site like Yousendit "expire" the link when it's been clicked enough times), the more we'll see of them.

Opinions are assholes, but some of these guys don't even go past the one-sheet, cutting and pasting album descriptions onto blogspot templates for what's often boiling down to sloppy, visionless file stashes. The pride is hit counts:

CONGRADS EVERYBODY!!!! we’ve hit 1000 users!!! and congrads to the user cvantez who is the lucky guy! Keep the good comments comin’ and we’ll keep the music playin’

Not really looking to get into the morality discussion, or the "what blogs can and can't do, what's a blog's real function, etc" one. We can take for granted that upping a new album from a living, breathing artist who supports himself off this stuff or wants to--that's pretty shitty, even if you disclaim that "All music posted here is for a 24 hour testing period. It is not my responsibility to make sure that you follow these rules, it is your own. I will not be held accountable."

MP3song blogs can rationalize teasing an album, drumming up interest, etc. The best of them have focus past NEW SHIT NEW SHIT, either curating old with new or taking advantage of the internet's collective memory to preserve some random seven-inch or mixtape freestyle nobody will remember if someone doesn't decide it should be.

But mp3-album bloggers barely get past a genre name. One blog, after putting up a rapidshare link for The Knife's Silent Shout LP, ripped Mark Pytlik's Pitchfork review completely, no credit. Other blogs barely move past the Amazon or AMG descriptions, since both websites are good spots to pick up album art too.

"A bunch of kids with lots of access but they don't know shit about music"--we've heard this before, and it's weird for me to be on the speaking side of it here, because I can't vouch for the "know shit about music" part anyway. But at least people are trying to process all this information, this horrific glut, trying to carve a path or a personality or their own genre even, branding themselves, etc. There's something to be said about the proper channels not because they were proper, but because they were channels at all--graduations of difficulty to score music that slowed down consumption, demanded processing.

What does interest me is that, we all laugh at the "24-hour testing period" line, but of course that's exactly the lifespan these albums might face now. Unfairly, since some need more time and others less, and the move could potentially be that good album=one that sounds good on computer speakers and is entirely legible on first listen. I'd be excited to see musicians keeping up those standards, the sorts of innovations they need to make. But here's yet another instance of information glut, with not enough gluttons. We're awash in sound but nobody's listening.